Three Poems by Ed Lyons

 

After the Baseball Game 

 

Was there watching the players

            Make their way from the dugout to the

                        Locker rooms under

            The stands, the crowd moving down

                        The ramps toward their cars, 

 

Didn’t feel like going home.

            Shadows were crawling across the green

                        Field, the day windy,

            Almost cool enough to wish

                        You’d worn shirtsleeves,

 

And there were hills that carried

            The known streets further down; there by the bay,

                        Blue and chopped beneath

            The drawbridge, there the catwalk

                        Over the causeway,

 

And this moped can make it

            Out to the beach, which used to be too

                        Far unless Mom drives.

            Gonna take time, but you

got plenty of time now.

 

Get through these cars. Damn this bridge

is high. Look. Boat below, trailing wake.

                        See it through the grate.         

            Good thing it’s dry LOOK WHERE YOU’RE GOING

                        Sidewalk. Clear shot now.

 

Along the pier there’s a crowd

            Like at a small carnival gathered.

                        Something’s happening.

            There’s the black and white van from Ninety-

                        Eight Rock. It’s that

 

Jam, that Battle of the Bands

            They’re talking about. There, the last band’s

                        Taking the stage.

            They came from the forests north

                        Of Tampa, The Spring

Gap Band and they sound like sun-

            Light on great rivers; their bitter love

                        Songs were breezes through

            Spanish moss, and I felt glad

                        Leaning over my

 

Handlebars, thinking about

            Freedom and how this time is my time,

                        Not what someone else

            Cares about, guys in black t-

                        Shirts making rebel

 

Yells and wild chicks with flasks,

            What I wanted. What I was waiting

                        For. They finished, and

            The applause was thin but true.

                        Days will get warmer,

 

Crowds denser, bands louder,

            I can come here whenever I like.

                        Gonna be good times.

            Wait till Ian hears about

this!   Palm fronds rustling 

 

In the breeze. Saturday. Dad’s

            Cooking steaks on the grill. Long shadows.

                        Gotta get going.

            We lived in the hills in the

                        Highest part of

 

The county. Takes forty-five

            Minutes through boulevards, suburbs, and

Ghettoes. I can go

            Any way I like. Stop off

                        For a Coke maybe.                       

 

 

The Will of Summer 

 

Those were warm days.

There was no sunrise in the kitchen window.

The leaves, rich and warm, filtered it’s light.

 

Sparrows fluttered from

The birdhouse to peck at the

Piecrusts scattered on the clover.

 

A tractor in a distant field

Emerged from the ebb of a passing car.

Wet dirt cooled in the shade.

 

Stones plunked in the deep well

Under the porch. Dark and dirty.

The dog’s still barking at the car.

 

The kitchen fan hummed

Like trucks on the turnpike.

Chunks of fresh apple lay in wet dough.

 

The walls were green and quiet.

The stormdoor hissed itself shut.

The day resolves itself into forms of remembering.

 

I heard the chickens chortle

From across the sunny fields

That lined the road,

 

Passed the dark porches

Read the sequence of German names

That hung from signposts.

 

I heard the clatter stream from the factory windows,

The clock out front of the garage doesn’t work.

No one was using the phone at the crossroads.

 

Weeds grew around the pile of stones           

Behind the hotel. Yellow walls.

Tires rustled like wind over gravel that cut my feet.

 

Where the shallow water

moved beneath the bridge

I could see the back of the village

And followed the steam through

The quiet fields alive with cicadas,

The corngreen wall –

 

The bees swarming the tassles

The deer safe and hidden,

Alone at the edge of the ripening field,

 

Confused and wondering

About her –

She leaning on the porchrail

 

Serene in the bright hot evening,

She telling intense shocking secrets

Over the phone as you stood in the booth

 

At the crossroads where none could listen

Listen in on the party line –

Hers the brilliant field

 

So dark within, hers,

The hushed and shallow water,

Isis of the swarming corn. 

 

In the Big World 

 

Rain scattered over fields and furrows

All night tapping leaves and living decay

            Daffodil

                        Sap surging through its heartbeat

            Emerges

                        From the soil that fascinates like fire

By dawn the bud has opened

            You’re holding the cool dry stalk

            Lifting the flower by its chin,

            Gazing into yellow landscapes –

                        Flame within petals

                        Green pollen stalks

Bridges into the center of all that lives.

 

You stand minute in the golden meadows

            Hawks riding windswells beneath the distant clouds,

Wind swelling through high needles vaster than hymns

            The vast loneliness encloses you

All the windy spaces pour into the room of your thinking.

            The sun blooms among the clouds,

            Spilling fire through fallen leaves.

            The shopping centers around the interchange

            Become a bitter joke; the fine arts

            Members and virtuosos a more formidable irony

            The mazes of ants move at the Queen’s direction,

            You find comfort in the coming of night,

            The wail of wolves and the screaming of owls.

 

 

Ed Lyons has been writing and publishing poems for over forty years. He is a regular contributor to the Poems from the Heron Clan anthology, and has also appeared in Albatross, A New Ulster, and previously in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and written hymns for the Moravian Church. The last is the subject of Ed’s 2019 chapbook Wachovia, published by Katherine James Books in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Ed lives in Winston-Salem, also in North Carolina.